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Book Review 15 – The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

I may, in the course of the past 14 weeks, have mentioned, once or twice, that I am a tad obsessed with Harry Potter. I’m not just obsessed, I am Obsessed (capital ‘O’ you see.) I don’t care if it’s unseemly for a woman in her late 30’s to take such delight in children’s fiction. A world without Harry Potter would be a much worse place as far as I’m concerned!

So considering my fandom. It may come as a surprise that I have as yet never read any of J.K Rowling’s adult fiction. The reason for this is that I am aware it is the world of Harry Potter I am particularly in love with. The peripheral books and films, whilst interesting, don’t speak to me in the way that Hogwarts and The Burrow do. So I have always worried that Rowling’s adult fiction wouldn’t hit the spot for me either. I’ve been in fear of toppling Rowling from the dizzying pedestal that I have put her on.

But this week I decided to take the plunge nevertheless. When better than during the 52 week challenge? What I found when I opened the book was unmistakeably Rowling. Short, punchy chapters and strong characterisations. Her voice came through very clearly. It was familiar and comforting. What I also found after a few pages was that I had watched the TV dramatisation of the book a couple of years ago and forgotten all about it. Till now. As the storyline started to shape up I began to remember. Annoying! I hated the fact that I knew how some of it ended. Luckily I couldn’t remember it all and the detail of the book seemed to be slightly different to the programme, so I whole heartedly enjoyed reading it even with the big spoiler swirling through my mind.

There are also some that say whilst ol’ J.K. is a master page turner her writing style lacks something. To those people I say this:

I shall illustrate my point by giving you an example of the antithesis of Rowling’s apparent flaw. My favourite book of all time is ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy. Roy’s writing is sheer genius. No-one can hold a candle to it. I am getting déjà vu so I think I’ll keep this brief in case I have mentioned it before, but after twenty years of waiting for her to write another novel I finally got my hands on ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ a few months ago and there she was, Roy in all her glory. Sentences so delicately hewn and crafted that you were scared to breathe too heavily lest you pollute them with your presence. Prose so mind numbingly good that it made you want to weep. The only problem was she forgot about the flipping storyline! She got right up on her activist stage and clean forgot that she was writing a novel. If you’re going to be an activist then, by all means, be an activist, but don’t come here telling me you’ve written a story when you’ve done nothing of the sort. In short (or actually, I’ve now gone on about it for rather a long time) she failed to grasp my attention. That is not what I am looking for in a book. Rowling however knows how to tell a story. She knows how to create strong characters, to engineer plotlines that keep you hooked, she knows how to draw her reader in. I’m afraid that when it comes to the tug of war between prose and plot, I would go with the latter… I’d rather have both of course, but if I had to make a choice then Rowling gets my vote every time.

Back to the book then. ‘The Casual Vacancy’ revolves around the fictional village of Pagford and the events that unfold after the sitting councillor dies mid-term. Elections are called and rival factions get behind their candidates, but the focus of the story is not political. It is the carefully crafted characters that steal the show. The prickly neglected child, the self-aggrandising old man, the brute of a father, the jaded wife, the non-committal boyfriend, the vulnerable teenage girl, the village gossip; and more besides. They are all here. All brought to life with Rowling’s crystal clear precision.

This book doesn’t shy away from gritty realities. So if you are looking for happy-ever-afters then I would suggest you look elsewhere. I recently mentioned to a colleague that I was reading The Casual Vacancy. ‘I had that book,’ he replied. ‘But I watched it on TV and it was so sad that it put me off reading it.’ I totally get this. Sometimes you think, I could just do without that enormous injection of melancholy into my life thank you very much. And honestly if you thought the TV version was sad, it left out further horrors that you do actually have to wade through in the book. The toughest part was there weren’t really happy endings for most people. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It provided a sense of realism and the feeling that the end of the book wasn’t the end for these characters. I’m kind of wondering what they’re all up to these days, continuing their fictitious lives in Pagford. A few years have passed, some will have moved, some will have changed jobs, the kids will have grown… Some things will be better, others will be worse. That’s life. And that’s how J.K Rowling turned from a children’s author to an adults one and stayed right up on the pedestal that I rightly put her on.

Next Monday I’m going to be reviewing a book by debut author Chloe Mayer. ‘The Boy Made of Snow’. Come back next week and check out out more of my literary ramblings then!

3 Responses to Book Review 15 – The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

The Casual Vacancy has been sitting on my shelf, unread, since I was given it for Christmas a couple of years ago. Being a huge Potter fan too, I think I shared your concerns. It’s now next on my list! 😃